09 October 2014 3:47 PM

I’m not sure what has happened to the Hong Kong protests, though I cannot believe we have heard the last of them. One contributor criticized me for (as he thought) supporting these protests, claiming this was incompatible with my attitude towards the mobs in Kiev last winter.

This gives me the pretext for another discussion of title, legitimacy and the huge difference between democracy and freedom.

This Ukraine-Hong Kong comparison is a strange parallel – as is the one made by another critic, who suggests that my desire for a negotiated end to the Syrian chaos is incompatible with my disapproval of the British surrender to the IRA. I do not believe that Northern Ireland can now truly be described as a law-governed entity, or that Britain’s relations with it are unpolluted by the contact. It is necessary to lie and to conceal, to maintain the illusion that this is a civilized peace – and many people lie to themselves and conceal wicked things from themselves. These are the ones who are most annoyed when I refuse to accept the lies, or leave the evil hidden.

The IRA was and remains a violent gang dedicated to the use of murder and violence to overthrow properly constituted lawful authority. There never ought to be any compromise between lawful authority and criminal gangs. Such a compromise does not legitimize the criminals; it corrupts the lawful state, and I think the subsequent treatment of the IRA by the British state, and our concessions to that body, are a series of demonstrations of this truth.

The Syrian rebels, though I suspect they were, from the first, infiltrated by Sunni fanatics, were attempting a violent overthrow of a violent and repressive regime, which has always rested on force, and draws its only legitimacy from the fact that it is the successor (via a putsch in 1963, and a putsch within the putsch in 1966) of the French colonial creation of Syria.

The 1963 putsch is now so long ago that it is getting a bit hard to argue that the current Damascus government is not established. But its establishment rests ultimately on force, not law. This could of course be said of most existing states (Britain having been subject to a bloodless but armed coup in 1688, the USA having been established by a lawless rebellion in 1776, and as for Russia, France and Germany, what can I say?) but time does tend to lend legitimacy to almost anything. It’s just that there’s no official set limit.

That colonial creation of Syria by France was recognized by the League of Nations and subsequently by the UN as a legitimate state, so it had technical legitimacy even if one might argue about the legal status of any of the entities carved out of the Ottoman Empire by western military force in 1918.

It’s possible to argue that any rebellion against the Assad State is at least partially justified by the violence of the regime and its lack of any means of free expression. But the Christian view, that even the overthrow of foul regimes by well-intentioned persons is morally risky, is often borne out in practice. Certainly the horrible fate of millions of Syrians, their happy lives ruined forever, their homes and hopes lost, their wealth wiped out, is a strong argument against insurrection.

I don’t myself believe that either side in the Syrian conflict is legitimate or good. I doubt the motives of the rebels, and suspect they were, from the first, backed by outside forces who had no concern for the wellbeing of actually Syrians. But I think that the lives of ordinary people were immeasurably better before anyone tried to overthrow the Assad state. And I also think that it was and is an illusion to believe that the rebels against Assad would have turned Syria into a paradise of gentleness and tolerance.

To support a negotiated peace in Syria is simply to call for an end to suffering. There is no simple choice between good and bad, lawful and lawless, civilized and uncivilized. In any case, I made the point to emphasize the fact that Syria’s ‘opposition’ has been uninterested in compromise, and seems happy to continue the war until the whole country is a ruin. I suspect the Assad state, by contrast, would make significant concessions to stay in power. But the rebels insist that Assad must go, knowing (I am sure) that he will not.

Back to Hong Kong, and the alleged Kiev parallel. Actually, my critic gets me wrong when he thinks I support these demonstrations. I think them hopeless, unrealistic and doomed and would be afraid of encouraging the former Colony’s young people into a confrontation they can only lose. Hong Kong’s long-term fate was decided when the British Empire was defeated in Singapore in 1942. From that moment, it was only a matter of time before China recovered its lost sovereignty.

The idea that Peking would ever allow full representative democracy in Hong Kong is absurd, and in any case Britain never allowed it, perhaps because of fears of mainland propaganda leading to heavy Communist influence in whatever elected bodies might result.

The deal between Peking and London is not for all time. All the documents make it clear that Hong Kong is an inalienable part of China, and that ultimately China decides what happens there. But the blow is softened by postponement . The agreement provides for a transition period (ending in 2047) during which two systems operate in China. China has never had any intention of allowing Hong Kong’s freedoms and laws to spread into China, let alone of allowing Hong Kong to be become even more free during the transition period than it was at the beginning.

On the contrary, Peking obviously plans and hopes for Hong Kong to become slowly less free. My understanding is that this has already begun, especially in the press, where critical voices have grown rarer since the handover. No formal process has taken place. But editors have been aware that they are being observed by cold, unsympathetic eyes to the North. By the way, Hong Kong is culturally very different from most of China. This is partly because the majority language is Cantonese rather than Mandarin, the tongue of Peking. But it is also because it never underwent the Cultural Revolution or the Mao Revolution, so religious and other traditions survive which have more or less been stamped out elsewhere on the mainland.

Undoubtedly the growing power of Peking over Hong Kong will also affect the bureaucracy, the police and the judiciary, Britain’s main legacies to Hong Kong. One might expect these to become less incorrupt, less independent of the state and less open.

As this becomes more and more apparent, I fear there will be convulsions. These will be either hopeless or tragic, as the moralising interveners who control foreign policy know perfectly well that the heroic, swaggering ‘West’ – master of all it surveys in Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Iraq(or not) is puny in the face of Chinese wealth and military power. The problem is that those who have grown up under the rule of law and possessing free speech and a free press are not all like the British, who casually let these things be abolished by their own rulers.

They are grieved at their losses, and will seek to preserve their liberties. That is why we are in the shaming position we are in, where we understand their plight, and inwardly sympathize with it, but would be wicked and wrong to encourage them on to the streets to try to defend it, because they will be beaten, and worse.

But their cause, even so, is more noble than that of the Kiev protesters, manipulated by one foreign power to be the spearhead in the offensive against another foreign power, ignorant armies strung along with empty promises of prosperity and freedom from corruption, which have not and never will come to pass.

I have travelled through Hong Kong many times, always on my way somewhere else ( usually to and from mainland China, though also to and from Japan and North Korea). I don’t claim to know it well. I love its old-fashioned British street names, its salty ocean air and its ferries ( for anyone Portsmouth-bred, a ferry is a special joy), but always have to think hard before being certain I have the map the right way up. But it was also the place where I learned something which has never left me .

Why exactly, I wondered, was it so different from mainland China? It wasn’t democratic (anything but). Yet it was immeasurably more free, better-ordered, cleaner, safer, more efficient. It was then that it first came to me that liberty of speech and press, and the rule of law, were far more valuable possessions than the thing we call ‘democracy’.

I still don’t know what will happen to Hong Kong’s law and liberty. I have assumed for years that it all hinges on what happens to Taiwan. Peking hopes above all to bring Taiwan (which is democratic) back under its rule. Many influences bear on that process, one of them being the slow but definite weakening of American military power in the region. But if Peking’s absorption of Hong Kong turns nasty, then any chance Taiwan can be gently enticed back into the national embrace will be destroyed. So as long as sane and cautious men rule in the secret Zhongnanhai compound in Peking, China will try to be gentle and patient (in its own eyes, not ours) with Hong Kong. But already, that gentleness and patience (as Peking sees them) are beginning to look (to us) like something a good deal more menacing. That’s no surprise. But we will do nothing, because we cannot.

And we will say little, because in our hearts we know that we long ago ceased to be the moral arbiters of the planet, whatever we pretend. .

Our moral windbags are too exhausted with attacks on tiny figures such as Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein or Bashar Assad. Could this actually be *because* they despise themselves for kow-towing in their hearts to Xi Jinping, the tyrant of tyrants? Could all this moralising about small despots be a substitute for the real thing? I have no idea, being uninterested in moralising about foreign countries . Liberty begins at home, and I’m more interested in Teresa May’s wild plans for ‘extremists’ and in the police invading my telephone records, to be worried about civil liberties in Hong Kong. We lost all that when we lost the empire. Time to realise it.

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@Sid
Alright. a nice rack of ribs at a Harvester. Mr Thomas on video .
@ Mr Thomas .
I thought you struggled with my comments . But true enough a video of Sid and I ,far more interesting that You and I
One in where you regale me with your meteoric rise to the top of the retail sector Known as ,worse than watching paint dry . As for your political stance . Well I'm not really sure you know them yourself. So a pretty bleak time on my part.

Sid: If "national tradition" dictated my religious beliefs I'd be one of the many whining bores in Ireland who blame all the country's ills, real and imaginary, on the Catholic Church. That's certainly the literary, artistic, political and journalistic tradition of modern Ireland - the culture I grew up in.

Were you to ever sit down to dinner with Sid, a video recording - which could be accessed by readers - would, I feel, prove wonderful entertainment. You could regale him with tales of your time as a mercenary (?) in Vietnam, your later career as a 'minder' (did you ever mind the top blokes in the BNP?) and your views on the way ahead. In return, Sid could describe in detail his angelic visitations...

It could provide the basis of a future hit comedy, something on the lines of Citizen Kane, perhaps?

The choice , dinner with Alan Thomas, or dinner with Sid . Well its really a no brainer .Sid every time. Even though both are very very, naughty boys. Sid's naughtiness is not contrived . Just an honest belief
Whereas Mr Thomas's is far more insidious pun not intented.

Alan Thomas " I hope you have your excuses ready when the time comes..."

The idea of tolerance of heresy is alien to the Gospel.

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35"For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW" Matt 10:34

Was not Peter debating against his brother?
I love my mother but she is a Catholic. The Truth trumps 'tolerance'. The cowardly are tolerant, the dumbed down.

So you are Roman Catholic out of national tradition then. It is tradition that is the hardest thing to give up, it is like the most addictive drug known to man. Tradition is one of the 666 words in the Bible.

Sid: Not British - Irish. Sinn Fein, as you may know, now have several representatives in the Irish Dail. When I noted in a previous comment on this thread that Sinn Fein were pro-immigration I was referring to their policies in relation to the Republic of Ireland, so your theory that they are working to swamp Protestant lands doesn't compute. Southern Ireland has a far higher rate of immigration than Northern Ireland. Indeed proportionally the Republic's immigration rate, both legal and illegal, is far greater than even that of the British mainland - although - quite surreally - the Irish media and political class choose to ignore this massive influx. (intriguingly this silence also applies to the Irish versions of British newspapers that take a strong anti-immigrant stance in relation to Britain).

By the way you seem to be under the misapprehension that most immigrants to Britain and Northern Ireland are Catholics. Some are, many are not.

As I also pointed out, Sinn Fein are an openly anti-Catholic party, so the theory that they're tools of the Vatican is ludicrously at odds with the facts. Like most other corporate left of centre parties (including the Tories, I would say) Sinn Fein's policies bear the clear imprint of the cultural Marxist agenda of oligarchs like George Soros, Bill Gates, Chuck Feeney and so on. As for the EU: its agenda is clearly anti-Catholic and indeed anti-Christian. I sympathise very strongly with British people's desire to regain their political and economic independence (as manifested in UKIP's rise) but those who believe the Catholic Church is the driving force of EU tyranny have been led a merry diversionary dance.

Incidentally, why do folk like you invariably hide behind code-terms such as "the Vatican" and "the Jesuits"? Why not just for once spell out your real target - the Catholic Church? Or would that be giving the game away?

>
Because the Catholic church has genuine God fearing people within her, but the Vatican is a corrupt and vile political city state that plots against governments all ove the world.

Interesting logic. Sinn Fein certainly do welcome illegals (which, amongst other things, makes a nonsense of their claims to be a nationalist movement),

>
Colm J, you are British? You are clearly an intelligent man, why would you be involved in a European plot, along with Sin Fein to flood a Protestant country with so many immigrants that take ultimate allegiance to the Vatican, that our Protestant culture is guaranteed to be destroyed and increasingly the EU will inevitably be able to usurp power and authority? Tell me why, when even a cursory glance at the Bible will demonstrate they are not teaching what God commands?

It makes no sense to me at all. I can understand how old ladies, like my grandmother, were misled by authority figures to trust in men like this and not really investigate the matter with an enquiring mind and people who are too busy in life and tragically think it not important, but you are an intelligent reasoning man.

I was once a Catholic, indeed I am half irish, so what is your motivation I am genuinely puzzled?

Sid: "Openly supportive of more Vatican foreign policy. And who welcomes even illegal immigrants with open arms? Sinn Fein, because they know what the plot is."

Interesting logic. Sinn Fein certainly do welcome illegals (which, amongst other things, makes a nonsense of their claims to be a nationalist movement), but then again Loyalist paramilitaries "welcome" immigrants in the very literal sense of the word, i.e., colluding with other international criminal networks - such as the Russian mafia - to traffic them. Many of these illegals make their way to the Republic of Ireland, by the way. Are these loyalist factions also part of a Vatican plot?

Incidentally, why do folk like you invariably hide behind code-terms such as "the Vatican" and "the Jesuits"? Why not just for once spell out your real target - the Catholic Church? Or would that be giving the game away?

Brian Meredith: "Successive U.S governments and many U.S journalists were openly supportive of the IRA."

Could you offer some concrete facts to support this statement? And by the way those who were in Dublin city centre on the day British terrorists murdered 24 innocent Irish citizens will not forget that day in a hurry either. Nor will the witnesses to British loyalist massacres such as Loughinisland and Greysteel forget those grim episodes - although the corporate media in Britain, Ireland, and yes, the U.S., have done their very best to airbrush them from history..

I suggest had Hitler won the war ,then Siberia might well have been a place dear to his heart .for ridding himself of his enemies. But the war was lost. So Stalin used it to send those he didn't like. Mining salt and other minerals.
Just a few days ago film was shown of complete divisions of Polish soldiers surrendering to The Germans . What the film showed was thousands of Poles tucking in to a hot meal . supplied by those nasty Nazis.
I'm really not on a Pro Nazi crusade here .Just making notes of how history gets ambushed. And how history blamed the Nazi's for the Kaytin Forest, slaughter of the Polish elite officer cadre's, amongst others

@ Sid
You sound surprised Sid. I knew this back in the seventies. My Angel trumping yours . His name by the by is "common sense". Their name ."The long game". As is surmised by our precious MSM one thousand an counting already there , How many here. 5,000. 10.000. 50.000. Who can possibly know .Our Government and intelligence service, no chance.

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